Thursday, July 30, 2009

When they start throwing bombs into each others cars - i think it might be time to consider the american political discourse at an impasse. Seriously - she's one of a handful of political aspirants in america that i'd even trust to do what she says - how sad is that.

Ok - so you're a company that sells turnkey hosting and commerce solutions for tens of thousands of online commercial vendors... your first priority is 'keep your servers secure' right?I mean... if someone managed to hack into them - you'd notice within hours - or even if you werent really paying attention within days right?

Monday, July 27, 2009

AT&T decided to block access to 4chan yesterday because of the content.

Now - I'm not gonna defend some of the content over there - it's well beyond vile... but legally AT&T just screwed themselves like I havent seen a company screw itself since Nortel bought Clarify.The problem is this... if you monitor and restrict access to content on your network - then you are LIABLE FOR THAT CONTENT IF YOU MISS SOMETHING. This is the LAW in the US. Compuserve fought this one for years back in 93 - and it's based on Supreme Court precedent.

...Smith v. California--an obscenity case, not a defamation case.Smith is the Supreme Court case in which the notion first appears that itis generally unconstitutional to hold bookstore owners liable for contentthey did not know about. So, if Smith v. California applies in aonline-service or BBS defamation case, it certainly ought to apply in anobscenity case as well.

So - if you're Apple you probably want to accelerate the process of breaking that exclusivity deal with AT&T - because AT&T is about to drag your ass down when they get sued by 4channers who get exposed to porn they didnt want to see.

AT&T - you are a carrier... you are not a censor... when you choose to become a censor you alter your protected status. Unbelievably stupid.

EDIT: Lol... looks like AT&T's lawyers have made it to the office this morning. They've suspended their censoring program and re-enabled access "following practices of their policy department". I swear - what kind of morons are running that company.

“If these reports are true, this raises significant questions about who the Fed is working for. There is record unemployment and businesses and consumers across American are starved for capital, if the Fed is paying higher interest rates on term deposits in order to induce banks to keep money at the Fed rather than lend, it would be an outrage,” Kucinich said.

I believe i suggested this would happen... 8 months ago... when i was bitching about the ted spread and what the fed was doing. But, as Krugman pointed out the other day, everyone was fairly convinced that Obama would be bringing in people OTHER than the Clintonistas to run the economy - it was one of Obama's biggest upsides - but alas it turns out to have been a sham - much like most of this asshole's presidency. Like Chris Brown - just another spineless self-serving morally reprehensible jackass - it's enough to wish you knew where that basement-dwelling monster Anonymous was when you needed it (but they're all busy in new jersey).